What They'll Say
by ShonenAiSorcerer
Summary: Hawkeye wonders what they'll say. Slash. Angst. Suicide -attempt?-. I'll try not to splash in that huge puddle of cliche waiting just over there, but I don't promise not to get a little damp.
1. Chapter 1

What They'll Say

Part One: Maine Sky

* * *

I hadn't ever really thought about it before.

No, not even there. It just seemed, well, not inexplicable; I knew why other people did it. But I didn't.

I was a doctor. Do no harm. Save lives, or try to at least.

I tried.

And back there there were always distractions. Colonel Potter always needed me in his office, Charles needed blame me, Frank needed to yell at me, the nurses needed to love me, then yell at me, Trapper needed me to get him in trouble, and BJ…even BJ needed me back there.

But it's different here. Well, not here here, over there here. Home.

It's quiet here. I see patients during the day, and my secretary smiles at me. I perform a few surgeries and save a few lives. Then I go home.

I never realized how big the house was before. After Dad died I spent hours just wandering the halls, listening to my shoes on the hardwood floors. It's huge, and it's quiet. Silent.

It gave me a lot of time to think, and to drink too. I did too much of both.

No, it's not the booze that got me here. Maybe it could have been.

The brain. Marvel of anatomy, mystery of science, and misfortune of Hawkeye Pierce. We've wrestled before; he wins sometimes, but I usually come out on top. Sometimes with help.

Sidney did a lot of that.

I don't know where he is, but I don't want him here. No, I don't want anyone here.

What'll he say? What'll everyone say? Did you hear about that surgeon, the one that lived over by Mable? Why would a doctor with an paid off house, two cars, and six acres of seaside land decide to…well, _you know_. They won't say it except in hushed voices.

The answer is simple my dear friends, I would say, if I weren't, _you know_, of course if I weren't then there wouldn't be any reason to say it, but anyway. Friends, I'd say, it was because of a mustache.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'd say.

Look at that; I knocked over the bottle. Little white pills all over the grass, well, not so little from this perspective, but if I weren't laying next to them.

Well, I was going to set them back up, but my arm doesn't want to move anymore. That's to be expected, considering.

Wait…

That was an effort, but I don't wanna go out looking at the pills. No, the sky. Look at it, clear, blue, early fall sky of Maine.

I'll try to remember to close my eyes before it happens, but right now…

It's beautiful.

-tbc-

This is just a little side project to Playing House that wouldn't stay outta my brain. It, my brain that is, insists that I get my own Hawkeye tries to kill himself fic, and now I have to try hard to dig myself out of this cliché-hole that I've fallen into.


	2. Chapter 2

Sorry about the switch to third person point of view, but it's difficult to give details and explain plot without making a character sound, well, out of character and slightly OCD as he talks about "the time last year when this, this, and this happened."

* * *

What They'll Say

Part Two: Extra Dry

* * *

He opened his eyes, curious as to why hell smelled like ammonia and bed linen.

It took a second for him to focus on the speckled tiles of the ceiling, and then he swore quietly.

That hadn't gone very well.

Feeling the tug of medical tape on his arm, his gaze swung downward from where he was propped in a reclining position to locate the entrance point of an IV. Though he knew it was futile, he debated ripping it out for dramatic effect, but he didn't really have the energy.

Letting his eyes slide shut again, he began to rehearse what he would say to them.

* * *

A change of light pricked his attention, and he opened his eyes to the hospital room bathed in the fluorescent glow of the overhead fixture. Someone was settling into the chair next to him, and the aftershave alone was enough to tell him precisely who it was.

He should say something clever, but when he attempted to move his tongue he found it caught in the recesses of his dry lips.

The other noticed, and standing, leant over to offer him a sip from the thin plastic cup. He accepted gratefully, but was quick to lift a hand and take the cup into his own possession before he empty it of its meager contents.

"Want another drink?"

He handed it back with: "Martini, extra dry."

The man sighed, set the cup down, and plopped himself into the chair, crossing his long legs at the knee and waiting.

"What?" Hawkeye returned the aggravated look he was getting.

Nothing.

With his emotions already frazzled, his frustration was quick to surface. "Why don't you just go home?"

There was another moment of silence. BJ he crossed his arms and stared.

"Our next lot," Hawkeye began, not without a hearty tone of weary sarcasm, "one doctor, slightly damaged. The upholstery's brand new though."

"Damnit Hawkeye!"

He took the sudden outburst without reaction. But internally he was glad he was in the hospital, because it looked like BJ wanted to hit him.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?"

"Playing hopscotch."

"I can't even talk to you." His gaze retreated from Hawkeye's eyes, grazing the hospital gown, the bed sheets, and the thin wrists that lay on them. He looked absolutely disgusted, and Hawkeye couldn't blame him. He didn't want to look at himself either.

"Just go home, Beej."

"Fine," he stood, dropping his arms to his sides, "fine."

-tbc-

Well, Hawkeye survived, but this was hardly the hospital bed declaration of love. Hey, why is BJ in Maine, anyhow? Find out next chapter. . .


	3. Chapter 3

What They'll Say

Part Three: Spare Key

* * *

The quiet room tugged at his nerves; it pricked his brain and made his fingers twitch nervously. Looking around, he found nothing to hold attention for more than a few seconds. Bed, chair, patient: he saw these every day, just from the other side. There was a window, but it was on the other side of the room and from his angle displayed only the blank, brick face of an adjacent building.

BJ had been gone for nearly an hour, and Hawkeye had admitted to himself about thirty minutes before that he wasn't coming back. That tugged at something too, and though he tried to think it was his vanity or his ego, his mind insisted that it was something else entirely.

He wasn't sure how he had become so wrapped up in BJ Hunnicutt. No, he admitted, that wasn't true. He remembered how it had happened, a blurred process of falling, a collapse of independent self stretched across humid Korean summers and frigid winter nights, a process inseparable from the jokes they told and all the camaraderie that was just a little something more.

It hadn't been sudden at all.

Then the war was over. There were rocks in the dirt, some letters, and a phone call that lasted forty-two minutes. Then nothing for six months. Hawkeye had wondered, had picked up the phone and hung it up again. Perhaps BJ wanted to forget, and if anyone could put it behind them, Hawkeye figured he owed his friend the courtesy of letting him.

He tried to let BJ go.

Maybe he succeeded. He tried not to look at his picture everyday, and he tried to go through meals without missing the familiar shoulder against his own, and he made a concentrated effort to stop recounting their adventures at the dinner table.

The last of these was successful, largely because he soon sat alone at that table. The speed with which it happened disoriented him. Planning the funeral, taking over the practice, and getting all the papers in order kept him busy while his friends were around. When they were gone and the dust settled, he found himself left alone with his thoughts.

He reconstructed the still. And the still made him think of BJ. So he drank from the still.

All very simple.

Work predominated his days, booze his nights. Weekends were a blur, but he knew he spent them alone.

But he managed it, and the still eventually dried up. He took two weeks off, went to ocean, got his head back together. Sidney helped then, arriving two months after the funeral, right when Hawkeye needed him the most. BJ never came, and Hawkeye wasn't sure if he even knew until much later. He was still letting him go.

Recounting it all didn't relieve his tension, but the silent room continued to prompt him. If he didn't talk to himself, he would have to talk to it, and that would just be crazy.

So he remembered the call.

It was the middle of the night in Maine, and Hawkeye's mind wasn't working well enough to calculate the time difference. BJ was sobbing on the other end, pouring out a story from a cheap motel room fifteen miles away from his Mil Valley home. Peg was cheating, no, not just cheating; his wife was in love with another man. She was going to move to New York with him. He was a doctor.

Hawkeye took another two weeks off work and flew to California. He offered a shoulder to cry on and a pair of hands to move a couch up the two flights of stairs of BJ's new apartment building, then he slept on the couch. The friendship border remained, and he didn't fight it. Truth be told, he was glad to have even the smallest part of the other back. They were friends, and though he was grateful, it was in those weeks, at first without even realizing it, that Hawkeye stopped trying to give up BJ.

Bad decision, he mocked himself, watching a nurse pass in the hallway.

BJ came to visit him in the spring, and they made love on Hawkeye's bed and spent hours in the hammock in the back yard. The blond brought up the topic Hawkeye hadn't dared to touch: what if he moved out here? He'd be closer to Erin's new home, and he could stop shelling out rent for a space that was too small for all his things. Hawkeye agreed and began to plan. When BJ left, it was with an extra key and an open invitation.

But it had been idle planning to BJ, and Hawkeye caught on a little too late. He had made one too many phone calls, bought one too many pieces of furniture, and indulged in one too many white picket fence daydreams; by the time he realized what had happened, he was all wrapped up again.

He tried not to push, but he admitted that even in not pushing he was aggravating to the other. At first he wanted BJ to come, but in the end, he just wanted a reason why he didn't.

_I'm coming out there in the fall…to visit_, he added.

Hawkeye had affected pleasure, _It'll be good to see you again_. He thought about asking whether or not he should make up the guest room, but bit his tongue.

BJ had arrived early on a Friday afternoon, but there had been no lovemaking. Hawkeye gave him more than one opportunity, but the blond didn't take him up. They never got beyond a few awkward kisses, obviously made for Hawkeye's benefit. It hurt to be pulled to BJ so fiercely, to want him, and to give heat and find only indifferent nervousness in return. Even their easy friendship seemed to have evaporated.

They stood in the driveway in the light of Monday's morning, a foot of air and ten thousand miles between them. BJ reached out a hand, and Hawkeye shook it, nodding at something only he knew about. He didn't watch the Buick back out of the driveway, turning instead to walk back in.

He paused to open the refrigerator and dig a bottle of gin from its depths; he had thought they might make martinis. Pulling the olive jar from the door, he popped the lid and fished one out with his fingers. Shoving it into his mouth, he began to hum a little around it, a simple tune often heard in MASH showers. The lid of he set by the stove, storing the jar in the crook of his left arm as he used the right to snag a martini glass from the cabinet. The glass clinked against the table, and he tilted the gin carelessly, spilling the clear liquid into the glass and onto the table. He filled it to the rim, righted the gin, and added an olive from the jar. He debated a moment, then set down the jar and lifted the glass, sipping the excess from the top.

Drink in hand, he ascended the stairs. He already had the means, meant, of course, to chase away the dreams that plagued him. He was careful not to keep them in the bedroom, though, not within easy reach. The bottle was in the bathroom medicine cabinet, and as he shut the door, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror; he offered his reflection a toast, _to absent friends,_ before downing the drink and dropping the glass into the sink with a clatter.

* * *

"Mr. Pierce?" the young nurse asked, obviously not for the first time. He hadn't noticed her entrance.

"Doctor Pierce," he corrected vaguely.

"Doctor?" She looked down to check the chart.

"Either that or I've performed some pretty expensive oil changes."

She laughed a little, nervously, and Hawkeye decided she must be new. He thanked whatever gods had taken momentary pity on him that he had not operated with her assistance. News was going to spread as it was.

"The doctor wants to talk to you, uh, doctor."

-tbc-

Well, a little more explanation this chapter. I working at this rather quickly, so expect later revisions, but for the moment, let us continue down our current path and hope the plot turns out.


	4. Chapter 4

What They'll Say

Part Four: The Butler

* * *

He was a tall man and seemed imposing as he stood above the bed, pen in one fleshy hand, tapping quietly against the clipboard in his other. Though he was mostly bald, the great deal of gray hair that made up his beard and eyebrows gave him the impression of being too hairy. Looking up, he peered at his patient over the gold rim of his bifocals.

"How're you feeling?"

"Peachy."

"Stomach hurt?" he shifted the pen to his coat pocket to flip back the sheet and probe the lower portion of the organ in question.

"Yeah," his patient grunted a little as the searching hands hit the sore spot.

"Well," he said as if Hawkeye had voiced the complaint in expectation of something, "that's only to be expected. We had to pump your stomach."

Hawkeye already knew that, and he purposefully resisted the urge to nod along in agreement. It seemed to throw off the other's rhythm. There was a moment of silent tension, then the doctor sighed and his detached, clinical gaze softened into a quizzical stare.

"Why'd you do it, Pierce?"

"I maintain that the butler did it."

"Come on," he took an unsteady seat on the bedside. "We've known each other forever. You can tell me." He tried to affect a fatherliness that came off unintentionally somewhere between doddering fool and leering pervert.

Hawkeye wondered if the man was asking his questions for his benefit but thought it unlikely. A better estimation of the situation suggested that his other coworkers were attempting to figure out the riddle. Why, they might ask, did Dr. Pierce cross the road? Sure, they'd seen him lingering on the sidewalk before, most likely with a martini in his hand, but this. What could it have been?

"Look, Harry," Hawkeye decided to nip the whole ordeal in the bud. He brought his stare around from the textured wallpaper he had been examining, "it was an accident. I was half asleep, had a dream, popped two pills without thinking I had taken two before." His blue eyes met Harry's disbelieving browns.

"At ten a.m.?"

"Yes."

"An accident…"

He shrugged and returned to looking at the wallpaper; it was a hideous shade of dirty-looking pink that reminded him of his grandmother's slippers.

He didn't bring up how Harry McDowell had had to leave an operating room when he suddenly come down with 'the flu' after spending a good portion of the night at Mick's bar, but both of them were remembering the way Hawkeye had covered for him, had listened to his unbelievable story and pretended to believe it.

Harry owed him one.

"Of course. I should have known," he smiled, wide but shaky. Hesitantly, he patted Hawkeye's forearm.

"So, when can I get out of here?"

The small space and its wallpaper were making him nervous.

* * *

Signing himself out of the hospital turned out to be a rather lonely experience. He watched people around him leave in pairs and groups, marked out as one of the few singular persons who were not merely waiting for someone else to appear. It seemed that he should be waiting too, but he quickly reminded himself that the process itself would not ensure the arrival of a friend. By the time he was waiting on the sluggish motions of the day nurse, he would have settled for a vague acquaintance.

Proceeding down the hall, he idly followed a light haired woman in a wheelchair, pushed by a nurse and holding a baby in her arms. Her husband was probably waiting outside with the family car and newly installed infant car seat. They all waited without speaking before metal doors, but the nurse looked him up and down, making no attempt to hide the evaluation in her gaze. Hawkeye offered his best impression of himself, grinning rakishly, but judging by the way she turned back unaffected, he could only surmise that he wasn't at the top of his game.

He suppressed a sigh. Thankfully, the elevator dinged and let them inside. The baby was wrapped in pink, a little girl; he wondered who had delivered her.

Outside the main glass doors, cars pulled to the curb and picked up the various patients. He stood just to the side, watching, slightly at a loss of what to do with himself. A young man with a broken arm got into a green station wagon next to an older woman, probably his mother, and a small child with no physical sign of injury begged her own mother for an ice cream. She was promised one as soon as they got in the car, and Hawkeye hated himself for wondering what was wrong with her that made her parent so eager to please. Just then, the proud father did indeed make an appearance, lifting the baby from the blond woman's arms. His eyes were so full of pure joy that Hawkeye had to turn away.

Gathering his light jacket more closely around himself, he shuffled down the sidewalk to the corner. Raising an arm, he hailed a cab. Leaning forward, he gave the driver directions. After the man nodded, Hawkeye collapsed back into the seat, eyes closed, suddenly exhausted.

* * *

"Twenty-three fifty," the cabbie totaled as Hawkeye stood outside the car. Drawing out his wallet, he poked a twenty and a five through the window, turning away in a silent gesture that suggested that the man should keep the change. As the cab backed out of the driveway, he turned towards the house.

Something seemed strange, and he suddenly realized that he hadn't meant to ever see it again.

Not for the first time, Hawkeye berated himself for his carelessness, but he wasn't terribly sure if he was getting the lecture for attempting something in the first place or for not doing it well enough.

"Home sweet home," he muttered before slipping his key into the back door.

It was already unlocked.

-tbc-

Did Hawkeye leave the door open, or is that pesky spare key back in the picture? Only time will tell.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: Thanks so much to those of you who have reviewed so far! And a special thanks to Dana Katherine and new york gal for commenting each chapter; you guys rock!

What They'll Say

Part Five: Zero Proof

* * *

The door slid open soundlessly on its hinges, and he stepped into the kitchen. The light was off, but the curtains were drawn back from the widow above the sink and the afternoon sun filtered easily through the panes. Still, the quiet room felt particularly empty.

Shedding his jacket, Hawkeye left it over the back of one of a chair and went to the refrigerator. Idly he opened it and glanced inside. The cool air swam around him as he leaned close, looking for the gin. He spent a moment blinking at the empty space it had occupied before remembering he had left it hastily on the table. He twisted around, leaning a little on the open refrigerator door where his arm rested, but the table was empty and clean. He distinctly remembered making a mess; he had taken strange joy in not having to clean it up. Turning back to the fridge, he noted the olives had, unlike the alcohol, been returned to their place in the door. Slowly, he stepped back and closed it.

He rubbed his hands over his eyes.

The floor above him creaked portentously with the weight of a person moving across it. Dropping his hands, Hawkeye focused his attention upward, watching as the noise moved across the ceiling and towards the stairs. A hope flashed across his mind, and he tried to quell it, summoning instead a bugler with a gun and ski mask. Both expectations fled as he saw a pair of brown loafers at the top of the stairs.

BJ never wore loafers.

Then a voice called, "Hawkeye?"

And he knew.

* * *

He flopped into the easy chair, staring at the blank, gray face of the small television set. It took a few minutes for the other man to follow him, but after some noises from the kitchen, he came baring two tall glasses filled with orange liquid that Hawkeye surmised was not the proof he wished it was.

"Here," he said politely, bending a little to hand over one glass.

Hawkeye took a sip and had to laugh, "Kool-aid, Sidney?"

"My daughter says I make the best orange kool-aid in the world," he smiled, settling himself onto the couch to the right of his unsuspecting host and recurring patient.

"What're you doing here?"

"Hm, well," he straightened up a little, "why don't you tell me?"

"Getting right into it, huh?"

"Unless you have other plans."

"No," he tried to force a smile, but the open expectancy in Sidney's eyes refused to admit falsehood, "I don't have any plans at all."

"Well, why don't we make some." He made the offer with a real smile, cupping his glass in both hands and watching Hawkeye closely.

Hawkeye inquired what the man had in mind, and Sidney suggested that they start having formal session together, at least for a couple of days. He set up two-hour blocks where they would talk, got out a pen and paper and wrote them down, then handed it all over to Hawkeye, pronouncing that he now had plans. The doctor studied the sheet for a moment, then folded it and placed it into his pocket. Rubbing a hand across his unshaven face, he stared at the ceiling.

"I almost got away from you this time, Sidney."

* * *

"You're sure you don't mind if I stay?"

"Unless you'd rather sleep in a rat-infested room and drive thirty minutes everyday for the pleasure of my company."

The psychiatrist shook his head and took hold of the pillow Hawkeye had dug out of the linen closet.

* * *

Several leaves drifted across the dirt path in front of them, and his blue eyes followed them to the other side while his feet continued to walk him to the quaint bridge that spanned the wide creek. He paused, leaning on the rail to watch the chilled water bump and wander around the rocks, swishing into miniature valleys and brushing the bank as it hurried on to its destination.

Sidney leaned in beside him, planting his elbows on the rain and lacing his fingers.

"Why pills?" he asked.

Though initially startled by the question, Hawkeye had learned that the shorter man often had a method to his seemingly random inquiries, so he put his mind to the uncomfortable subject.

"I dunno," he said as he came up empty. "I always figured…"

"What?"

"I always figured it would be a scalpel."

"Ah."

"Ah, that's it? No, so you've thought about this before?"

"Have you?"

"Not really…a little…I mean, I guess everyone did, there."

"Why here, then? Why here where there's so much less suffering?"

"This isn't a mystery, Sidney. I know why I did it; you don't have to dig it out of my subconscious."

"Okay," he was always willing to go along, "why'd you do it?"

"You know that feeling when you walk into your house, coming home from work or something, and you expect someone to be there, but they're not? The house is empty, and you notice it's empty in a way you normally don't…it's too quiet, too still…because you know it's not supposed to be that way." His eyes were focused ahead and his mind inward.

"And?" Sidney pushed gently.

"I was always in the empty house."

-tbc-

I do so love Sidney, but he can hardly stay with Hawkeye forever… Oh, and I checked, kool-aid was around way back in the twenties. I wonder what BJ's favorite flavor is?


End file.
